Merry Xmas, Happy 2012 and I'm back from Sydney!!

WOW it has been quite a while since I last blogged! Hello hello hello everybody :D I am reallyyyy behind on posts, especially because I had no time to schedule any before I left to go on vacation (big apologies) so I'm going to try my best to like, cram blog posts in daily for you guys ^.^"

I hope you all had a very merry Christmas and a happy new year celebration ♥ Best wishes to everyone for 2012

Firstly, some brief news to share:

• I attended a Christmas picnic with Adelaide Beauty Bloggers on the 17th of December! I need to blog about that and share pictures etc (I'm really behind eek)
• I had an early Christmas celebration with my boyfriend he got me a condenser microphone (because I love singing) and pink headphones ^_^
• I dyed my hair using the shade 'Pink Beige' - my first time using Asian/Japanese hair dye (pics to come)
• I received my first ever cheque, all thanks to blogging
• I was away for 9 days from the 22nd until 31st of December in Australia's most populated city - Sydney =] Which I will begin to blog about in this post

As you can probably tell, I have been slightly more busy than usual last month in December and it turned out to be one of the best and happiest months for me in 2011. So glad that my year ended on a good note. I am ready to take on 2012, hooray!

So I am going to dedicate this post to my Sydney trip because it was amazing and it may be helpful for my readers who might be interested in visiting Sydney one day.

SYDNEY POST PART 1 - SHOPPING

Because all girls love shopping, right? The next post will be about the scenery/tourist attractions. Unfortunately I took no photos of food but if there's room on this post I can talk a little about the places I went to eat and my thoughts on the food/service.

I would have done a day 1, day 2 etc. thing but to be honest... I didn't keep track of my daily events (I really should have in a diary or something) which means that I'm just going to have to try and remember things that happened and look at my pictures. So glad I took pictures... they surely are for memories sake!

I thought it would be appropriate to take a picture of some Christmas decorations for this blog post. I was supposed to do a Merry Christmas post but I had no time T_T

So, on Boxing Day aka the day after Christmas I headed out into the city to do some shopping... which I didn't have much luck with because it was PACKED with people and massive lineups everywhere. As a girl who has always lived in a very quiet city... this was absolute chaos and madness for me. I can't shop properly when there are too many people around me and the stores are a complete mess. It ruins the experience for me!

Even though I had enough money on me and there were massive 70% off signs everywhere... I didn't buy a single thing that day. Yes I am one crazy, crazy girl because hello, I was in Sydney on Boxing Day when there were epic sales yet I didn't purchase anything!! There is something wrong with me ahaha. Despite not taking advantage of the sales, it was still a good day overall. Being shocked by the amount of people in the city (CBD)... nothing like I had seen before. I believe that Sydney's population is doubled or tripled the amount of people living in my home city, Adelaide. It's so intimidating D:

Westfield Sydney Shopping Centre (thanks for the name Tezza!)

Biggest Westfield shopping center in Australia I believe? It's surely the prettiest with the glass. I admire glass buildings, maybe it's because there are very few in my city :(

I'll show you the view from the glass bridge after this pic.

My aunty really wanted to go in Zara because they were having massive sales but there was a line and my cousins and I didn't want to line up haha (so we didn't)

Ooh look at that crowd. I was amongst that and had to squeeze my way through people - not fun! 

I feel sorry for the line of cars wanting to get by lol

This is the longest line I saw... it literally went around and outside!

Guess which store it was for?

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Gucci!

Is it really worth the line up? I'm assuming that the security guards would only let a few in at a time since it is a high-end store. I saw the Chanel store which only had like 10 people in there with a pretty long line too. If they let the Chanel store be full of people, there'd be a higher risk of stolen goods.

This is the Strand Arcade, right? It's actually the QVB (Queen Victoria Building) - thanks for the correction Jenny xD Lots of designer fashion stores, especially Australian designer labels

Downward view in the Strand Arcade QVB... crowds of people walking

Myer is a high-end department store known all over Australia. I went in there, it was so busy

The following pictures were not taken on Boxing Day...

I went to the city again on the 30th of December and it was definitely less busy, but still had more people in town than a considerably 'busy' day in Adelaide

Adelaide has no stores like this. I didn't go inside the LV store but I walked past it... on the other side of the road

Walking past the Strand Arcade QVB again

It's the Apple Store! My first time being in one... it was cool. None in my city

I also visited Sydney's 'Chinatown'. There's a Chinatown here too and in other Australian cities. In other words, it's the Asian part of the CBD.

The following places are at Dixon Street:

 I didn't go in this store but ohhhhh, it's so pink! It's my favourite colour and on the outside the store looks so princess-y. Gorgeous... wish I could find a store like that here

But wait 'til you see the store that was right next to it...

*Fangirl moment*

It's a shop filled with K-pop (mainly) and also J-pop, C-pop and Asian dramas/movies

I'm a huge K-pop fan and when I first saw this store I was so freaking excited! One of the highlights of my trip was definitely discovering this store... I didn't even know that it existed. Filled with K-pop posters, albums, merchandise and much more *dies* And mvs playing on the screens (It's Super Junior's Mr Simple playing on the screen when I took this photo hehe ♥_♥) gahh, best store in all of Chinatown/city - hands down. My cousin and I spent so long in the store when we first went in, but we didn't buy anything xD Too much in shock and admiring such awesomeness! Once we were in there we didn't want to leave but we had to because of our parents and aunties nagging us haha. But you know what? We ended up visiting this store 3 times during our 9-day trip... that's a third of the days we were in Sydney haha :D So worth it, I want to go in that store again because there isn't one in here. Because of this store, I ended up fangirling in public for the first time LOL (consisting of random squeals, saying omg over and over again and having my hands on my face). You can imagine, right? Almost like seeing a celebrity xP

Later on I'll show you what I bought from this store. I'll share it with the rest of the things I bought throughout my trip :)

I could have shown this picture first because it's one of the first pictures I took but I decided to show the more exciting pictures first (not that this isn't exciting, cos it still kinda is!)

Morning Glory at the train station! Such a surprise to see MG here... the MG stores in my city are big ones only in the CBD and not situated in any suburban areas, let alone a train station. It's awesome how you can be like 'oh I need/want to get something from Morning Glory... I can just go to the train station' whereas for me here I have to make my way into town to get to a MG =[ This train station was only in walking distance from where I was staying (aunty's house). Wish there was one this close to me!

Naww, Rilakkumas and Korilakkumas at the front window ^_^ All so cute

I've got no more shopping pictures so now I can share with you all my haul... which is absolutely tiny! This is because I spent most of my time sightseeing than shopping (sadly). My sightseeing/tourist attraction post after this will probably be more exciting. You'd think that as a beauty/fashion blogger, the shopping pictures and haul would be amazing! I'm afraid not, since it wasn't entirely my decision to choose where to go everyday. If it was I'd choose to shop shop shop xD

Before you say 'omg is that all??', keep in mind that I had very limited time to go shopping and I didn't have enough luggage space to bring back a lot anyway. Next time I'll know to pack way more light if I visit Sydney again *silly me*

Random stuff and no cosmetics.

Well, I wanted to get these mini Dolly Wink nail polishes that were only $10 for 5 bottles but grrr, mum rushed me out of the store before I could purchase them! Then I told her about the deal and it was too late, the shop was already closed and I was going back to Adelaide the next day. Zzz what a good deal T~T I want to go back there so badly. However I was also worried about whether nail polishes are suitable for having in luggage bags since they're known to be explosive? That's why I brought no nail polish with me to the trip and thus I ended up persisting with ugly chipped nail polish -_-

 Red Chiffon Blouse - $10 @ a random boutique near Redfern train station?

This is the back of my red blouse, I love it! The style looks familiar though... I think it was a blouse on Amanda's blog sale? Haha
Excuse my hand lol..

Cream Woolen Poncho - $10~ @ a Korean Boutique in Chinatown... Holic something?

I know this is totally not something I'd want to buy or wear right now since it is boiling hot but my mum bought this for me, hahaha. It was like 70% off the original price and she liked the design. It's quite cute and I will wear it in Winter.

K-dramas City Hunter and Heartstrings - $10 each @ a shop in Cabramatta

Super Junior Super Show 3 CD - $24

Last time I checked, there's none of these in my city ;_; $10 for a Korean drama on disc that is full HD 1080p and can be watched using a DVD player is pretty cheap. Is there anything like that in Adelaide? Seriously is there? Because I want to know and buy more haha. I started watching City Hunter and it's good so far. Apparently it'll get even better, yay =] I want to watch Heartstrings because CN Blue's Yonghwa is in it and I love the actress Park Shin Hye. These two acted alongside each other in the drama 'You're Beautiful' and I loved it! Great to see these two in a drama together again n_n

And I love Suju so of course I bought a CD of theirs. Except this isn't like an album, it's their performances from Super Show 3 so there are 2 discs. I know that the DVD version of it just came out but I don't care, the CD is cheaper lol.

And my final purchase from Sydney was my monkey neck pillow, for my plane ride back home. Morning Glory were having a 30-50% off store wide sale and so I had to get something. RRP $19.95, got it for $13.95. This was perfect~ it was something that would not count towards the luggage weight x] And when I first spotted this monkey neck pillow I was all like :O It's Eunhyuk lol (Suju/K-pop reference). He's not my Suju bias by the way... let's just say he's my bias' BFF ;] People would normally see this as just a cute monkey neck pillow but not me (K-pop makes me think differently about a lot of things ahaha)

The dorky side of me - wearing the monkey neck pillow on the plane as a pair of headphones xD I probably got some weird looks from passengers, meh! Excuse the blurryness

That's me makeup-less and on the plane ride home not giving a crap of how I look lol. Not to mention, oily hair and feeling a tad stressed from the crying babies on the ride =/ At this time I was either attempting to block out the noise or preventing my ears from getting blocked. Oversized monkey headphones for the win ;D

Anyway this post has become really lengthy and I'll just leave it there for now. Look out for my part 2 post where I discuss places in Sydney that I visited as well as some restaurants. Thanks for reading guys, hope you learnt some new things about Sydney and that it's been helpful. Has it made you want to shop in Sydney? And for those who already reside in Sydney, I envy you for living in such a fun and lively city!

Since this post was mainly about shopping, I have a questjen for you about it:

Would you line up outside a designer store to get a bargain on Boxing Day?

My answer: No! I hardly ever shop for brands and there's way too many people in those designer stores. I don't feel that I'd have a chance to grab a bargain T__T

Tell me what bargains you got in the post-Christmas sales and I also want to know whether any of you ended up lining up outside a store :)